Live transmission and on-demand download of congress lectures via Internet allows organizers to considerably enlarge their range of potential participants. m:convidoc offers virtual participants what is almost a live experience. Speakers and their actual presentation, i.e. the entire screen content, may be recorded and uploaded to the Internet without any great effort.
Many potential attendees can’t visit congresses for a lack of time, and others might be interested in just one particular lecture. That’s actually the group of people who might be interested in the full-service offered by m:convidoc: it allows users to follow specific lectures and presentations live online or to download them later from the media center on demand in the Internet. m:convidoc was developed by the congress and event organizer m:con in Mannheim. "A consistently rising number of organizers has begun to appreciate the advantages inherent to live broadcasts and on-demand availability of the entire event in the Internet", said Thomas Hohm, m:con’s IT services manager. "As part of the Internet, the congress is open to viewers all over the world. This approach is suited to tap new potentials and to raise the number of participants as well."
m:convidoc is based upon four technical components: a camera, a recorder, recording and playback software, and an Internet portal. The lecturer is filmed with the camera, and the presentation on his/her screen is recorded at the same time while the soundtrack is recorded from the center’s audio system. Video, audio, and screen are synchronized to each other and the data is transmitted to a server loaded with an Internet portal. Users may use this portal to access the contents – live or as download from the media center where all lectures and presentations are automatically archived. Organizers may also integrate online participants live into moderated discussion panels by opening chat windows.
The stream viewed by users comes very close to live transmission: they can watch the lecturer render the speech and at the same time they have the presentation or demonstration in front of their eyes. Users can call off all contents and have a number of options available to watch presentations or videos. They may flip through charts; the speaker video is fast-forwarded or rewound for that purpose. An extensive search function allows users to filter the contents on the basis of search words. This enables them to rapidly find the particular contents they are looking for.
m:convidoc is also an effective tool for sprucing up the event at the venue itself: the lectures and presentations may be simultaneously transmitted to display screens outside the hall. "The prior art was to use camera productions, and that is much more expensive and showed either the speaker or the presentation and not both simultaneously on a single screen“, said Thomas Hohm.
"Online attendance is an alternative to actually visiting an event, but of course it cannot really compare with personal presence and communication with colleagues at a congress", said Hohm. He pointed out that this method is an instrument to increase attendee capacity, because the number of online participants is actually infinite. In addition, clients have the possibility to post evaluation and documentation of congress contents. And that’s what makes m:convidoc so interesting above all for medical congresses: all lectures and presentations are stored at the media center. Users have access to the contents like in an online library, expert know-how can be used much more extensively. And m:convidoc is also a convenient tools for delegates actually attending a congress or similar event: they can review in detail any lecture they attended in person and can virtually visit events they were unable to attend due to their own particular congress schedule.
Clients can actually customize their online participation to suit their own needs and requirements; the system allows for flexible user and administrator rights. Congress contents may be open to all users, but it may also be protected by password or require prior registration and it’s also no problem to install a payment function. "m:convidoc will enable congress organizers to turn the Internet into a source of income. We can install a credit-card payment function for contents not designated to be available at no cost“, Hohm explained. Here, too, flexibility has top priority. Online congress participants will not necessarily have to book the entire event. An option might be to sell tickets for specific lectures or presentations or to put together packages, for example with keynote addresses. The online tickets are sold on the same Internet platform as the admission tickets to the congress.
Congress contents may be recorded and transmitted by m:convidoc both at the Congress Center Rosengarten operated by m:con in Mannheim and also at any other congress center. Organizers planning to use m:convidoc will first have to obtain the lecturer’s and/or author’s declaration of consent to making contents available in the Internet as is provided in the applicable copyright act. Thomas Hohm and a team of six colleagues have been working on implementation of the m:convidoc concept since November 2009. They currently have ten video recorders available, which may be operated in parallel mode. Their equipment was put to first practical use in April at the 116th Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin (DGIM) e.V. in Wiesbaden. Approximately 8,200 physicians and scientists from all healthcare sectors had traveled to the Rhein-Main-Hallen in Wiesbaden to further their medical expertise. The congress had its focus on state-of-theart imaging systems, inflammatory medicine, infectology, and intensive medicine. 128 industry partners exhibited their most recent developments on more than 2,900 square meters of rented exhibition space. m:con has been in charge of organizing the entire five-day event for the past six years – this encompasses everything from planning and finding sponsors over speaker management, media contacts, participant registration all the way to making meeting technology available. Almost 1,300 speakers gave lectures and presentations at the event. In the course of the pilot project, the team filmed five sessions in parallel throughout the congress, online subscribers were able to watch more than 100 sessions with over 300 lectures live in the Internet. Those unable to attend the event may visit the congress homepage at www.dgim2010.de, where they have access to medical contents. Thomas Hohm is convinced that this was a most successful launch for m:convidoc, and m:con managing director Michel Mauge is certain that this option for virtual attendance at congresses has considerable potential: "There’s a need for innovative solutions capable of bringing the congress industry forward. The combination of congress contents with Web 2.0 technology creates genuine surplus value for organizers."
